Jeffries Vincent (Editor). Handbook Of Public Sociology

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182 Chapter 10

public tends to be represented as a collection of individuals rather than a

community of people whose influence is greater than the sum of its parts.

So corresponding to the erosion of the sociological imagination is a weak

concept of the public and of the people that constitute it. It appears that

the declining influence of the sociological imagination is paralleled by a

diminished status assigned to the sense of agency.

To understand the sense of powerlessness that pervades public life it is

necessary to look at the way contemporary culture influences the way we

regard ourselves as human beings. The prevailing sense of diminished sub-

jectivity is underwritten by a distinct code about the workings of human

behavior and personhood. Every culture provides a set of ideas and beliefs

about the nature of human beings and what constitutes their personhood.

Our ideas about what we can expect from one another, how we handle

uncertainty and change, deal with adversity and pain, and how we view his-

tory are underpinned by the particular account that a culture offers about

personhood and the human potential. As I argue elsewhere, the defining

feature of the current Western twenty-first-century version of personhood is

its vulnerability (Furedi 2004).

The belief that people exist in a state of vulnerability informs the way that

we are expected to make sense of our experiences. As a cultural metaphor,

vulnerability is used to highlight the claim that people and their communi-

ties lack the emotional and psychological resources necessary to deal with

change, make choices, and possess the emotional resources to deal with

adversity. From this perspective public life itself can exist only in a feeble

form. It is this diminished sense of agency presupposed by the association

of personhood with vulnerability that public sociology needs to confront.

It is worth recalling that on balance Mills had an optimistic view of person-

hood. With a hint of irony he noted that “we have come to know that the

limits of ‘human nature’ are frighteningly broad” (Mills 1959:6).

CULTIVATING THE ACTIVE SIDE OF PUBLIC LIFE

Public sociology can make an important contribution to community life

through its emphasis on the social dimension of people’s experience. It

needs to project a sense of a world that can encourage purposeful public

activity and the exercise of agency. Of course it is not a question of simply

taking sociology to the public. If it is to resonate with a wider audience it

needs to be a sociology that develops through public engagement. That

requires public sociologists to resist the prevailing anti-populist prejudices

that inform the thinking of the cultural elites. Respect for the public is im-

portant. But respect does not mean an uncritical acceptance of public life

as it is now constituted. It is precisely because we respect the intelligence

Recapturing the Sociological Imagination 183

of our public that we are prepared to question its prevailing outlook and

common sense and enter into to an open-ended dialogue with it.

An intelligent public is the product of intellectual and cultural ferment

and lively debate. Historically such publics have emerged in response to

issues and problems that exercised a great significance over its life. Not

infrequently such publics have thrown up their own intellectuals who

were prepared to ask questions of those in power. There is no reason why

sociologists can not make a significant contribution in this respect. Indeed

unless we see ourselves as part of a public we will lack the language with

which to conduct a wider conversation. Language and attitude to language

is crucial. One of our tasks is to convey complex ideas in a simple—not sim-

plistic!—form. Nor is it simply the case of taking our sociology to a wider

audience. It is also a question of developing a sociology that is open-ended

and able to yield to new experience. As sociologists who aspire to engage

with a wider public we have to realize that one of the principal tasks fac-

ing us is the restoration of the sociological imagination among ourselves.

Sociology needs to possess a robust sense of the social if it is to invite the

attention of the kind of people who can constitute active participants in

an articulate public. What is required is what Burawoy has characterized

as “organic public sociology.” “Between the organic public sociologist and

a public is a dialogue, a process of mutual education,” he notes (Burawoy

2005:8). One important outcome of such a dialogue will be to render

visible the important connections that underpin altruistic sensibility and

future acts of social solidarity.

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can Sociological Review 70:4–28.

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can Right. London: Secker & Warburg.

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don: I.B. Tauris Publishers.

———. 2004. Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age. London:

Routledge.

———. 2005. “From Europe to America: The Populist Moment Has Arrived.” Spiked,

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Gronewalter, Michael. 2002. “Don’t Get Smart, Get Stupid.” DemocraticUnder

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bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/10/14328).

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———. 1963a. “Culture and Politics.” Pp. 236–246 in Power, Politics, and People:

The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills, edited by I. L. Horowitz. London: Oxford

University Press.

———. 1963b. “Mass Society and Liberal Education.” Pp. 353–373 in Power and

People: The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills, edited by I. L. Horowitz. London:

Oxford University Press.

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the Nation! New York: Regan Books.

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Distress. London: Robinson.

III

TEACHING AND

PUBLIC SOCIOLOGY

187

The clearest trend in American sociology over the past several years has

been toward pursuing what Michael Burawoy coined “public sociology.”

Just as clear is that the idea of giving sociology a more public face has

moved American sociologists, albeit in two opposite directions. Indeed,

public sociology’s proponents are matched in their enthusiasm only by the

vehemence of their opponents.

Regardless of their respective positions, sociologists brave enough to

enter the debate over the virtues and vices of public sociology have largely

ignored a crucial way in which to take the discipline public; namely,

through teaching. In all that has been written about public sociology, very

little has been said about students, perhaps sociologists’ largest and most

obvious public audience. And the few published essays that have discussed

the teaching of sociology have focused solely on undergraduate and gradu-

ate students. To this point, every aspiring public sociologist, as well as each

opponent of public sociology, has completely ignored what may very well

be a much more important public: high school students.

This chapter begins with a brief outline of the intellectual lineage of pub-

lic sociology and a summary of the little that has been written about the

connection between public sociology and the teaching of sociology. The

bulk of the chapter is devoted to discussing how Burawoy’s four “faces” of

sociology have been, are, and could be applied in high school classrooms.

In the process, it brings to light the absolute necessity of a solid foundation

of professional sociology. I ultimately argue that without the strong pres-

ence of professional sociology, the other three types cannot and will not be

developed in high school sociology courses.

Presenting Sociology’s Four

“Faces”: Problems and Prospects

for the High School Course

Michael DeCesare

188 Chapter 11

TEACHING SOCIOLOGY: A NEGLECTED

EXAMPLE OF PUBLIC SOCIOLOGY

Sociologists have always been the most introspective of social scientists.

Since Robert Lynd (1939) famously asked Knowledge for What? 70 years

ago, each succeeding generation of sociologists has struggled to define the

discipline’s purpose, mark its boundaries, and confront its theoretical and

methodological weaknesses. Michael Burawoy’s relatively recent call for a

more “public sociology,” and the lively debates it has stirred up, is only the

most recent case in point.

Like previous sociologists who have been courageous enough to offer

a vision of what the discipline could and should be, Burawoy has said

relatively little about how his notion might be realized by teaching sociol-

ogy. In fact, most sociologists—critics and supporters of public sociology

alike—have said very little about connecting the teaching of sociology to

the promotion of public sociology. And among the few commentators

who have discussed teaching, not a single one has devoted any attention to

teaching below the undergraduate level.

Besides Burawoy himself, just one of the contributors to a 2004 Social

Forces symposium on public sociology even mentioned teaching—and only

in footnotes (see Brady 2004). The journal Social Problems also published

a symposium on public sociology in 2004. Like the papers in the Social

Forces special issue, its essays, with two minor exceptions, had nothing to

say about teaching (see Pfohl 2004 and Vaughan 2004). One year after the

Social Forces and Social Problems symposia appeared, The American Sociologist

published a special double issue on public sociology, an ambitious project

which was eventually turned into a book (see Nichols 2007). Only Edna

Bonacich (2005) devoted any space—a page and a half, to be exact—to the

link between public sociology and the teaching of sociology. She admit-

ted to “try[ing] to inject a ‘Marxist’ understanding” into her undergraduate

course on Research Methods in Ethnic Studies (2005:113). She did so by

asking students to participate in group projects on “‘lessening inequality’ or

‘countering racism’” (2005:114). Bonacich’s essay, as well as her teaching

style, clearly leaned toward outright activism rather than sociology.

Nichols’s (2007) edited volume on public sociology is one of three that

have appeared over the past couple of years. Clawson et al.’s (2007) col-

lection offers essays by fifteen prominent sociologists—including two by

Michael Burawoy himself—on public sociology. And a third collection

of essays on public sociology, Blau and Smith’s (2006) Public Sociologies

Reader, appeared one year earlier. Among the three books, there is not a

single mention of using high school classrooms as what Burawoy would

call “laboratories” for public sociology.

Presenting Sociology’s Four “Faces” 189

As the person who has spearheaded the campaign for public sociology,

Burawoy has written relatively little about teaching. And, like previous

authors’ comments, his observations have applied only to college and uni-

versity classrooms. Perhaps Burawoy’s clearest statement of the relationship

between teaching and public sociology is in his contribution to the Social

Forces symposium, where he suggested, quite correctly, that “students are

our first public” (Burawoy 2004:1608). Borrowing the terms and themes

found in Freire (1993[1970]) and, before him, in Gramsci (1971), Burawoy

differentiated “traditional” from “organic” public sociology, and discussed

in one paragraph—of a 16-page article—how each results in a unique

teaching style:

In the traditional approach we treat [students] as empty vessels to be filled

with knowledge. The lecturer stands above the lectured in a position of un-

questioned authority—the possessor and disseminator of truth. Dialogue, if

it takes place at all, does so behind the back of the lecturer. In the organic

approach to teaching, students are treated not as tabula rasa but as carriers of

accumulated experience, brought to the surface and turned into knowledge

through dialogue. That experience may be cultivated from a student’s own

biography and augmented through specific engagements (e.g., service learn-

ing)—the underlying presumption is that the teacher and taught have an or-

ganic relation, that the educator too must be educated. (Burawoy 2004:1608)

Few sociologists are likely to disagree with Burawoy’s “organic” conceptu-

alization of teaching. As attractive as it might be, however, it says very little

about precisely how it qualifies as public sociology.

It is undoubtedly true that our students are our first public. But under-

graduates are not necessarily the largest or most important, and they are

certainly not the only, potential public audience for sociology. In fact,

more than one-third of a million students each year take a sociology course

at some point in high school (U.S. Department of Education 2001). These

students constitute a very large and very public captive audience. Practicing

and aspiring public sociologists alike should begin examining the kinds of

sociology that high school students have been and are exposed to—as well

as thinking about the kinds they should be exposed to.

What follows is an outline of the past, present, and probable future pre-

sentations of Burawoy’s four “faces” of sociology in high school courses. I

suggest that none of the four has ever been prevalent in high schools, and

only one—professional sociology—is at all likely to become more com-

mon. But even establishing that type, I argue, will take a lot of work. The

fact of the matter is that without a deep and solid foundation of profes-

sional sociology, the other three types cannot and will not develop at the

secondary level. This is a lesson, incidentally, that carries over into each

190 Chapter 11

subfield of sociology, insofar as its practitioners are interested in connecting

their particular area of expertise to public sociology.

PRESENTING SOCIOLOGY’S FOUR “FACES”

TO HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

Regardless of one’s own orientation to sociology, every self-reflective so-

ciologist would do well to devote serious attention to Burawoy’s fourfold

conceptualization of the field; that is, professional, critical, policy, and

public sociologies. Though one may quarrel with Burawoy’s definition of

each type, and with the relationships he observes among them, it is diffi-

cult to deny that his model neatly categorizes an increasingly messy field.

It also provides a useful framework for thinking about the ways in which

sociology has been taught in high schools—a subject that has been largely

ignored by sociologists for more than 95 years (DeCesare 2007).

Professional Sociology

Burawoy (2005:10) suggests that the role of professional sociology is

to “suppl[y] true and tested methods, accumulated bodies of knowledge,

orienting questions, and conceptual frameworks” for the practice of both

policy and public sociology; indeed, it provides the legitimacy of and ex-

pertise for both types. Professional sociology, in short, consists not only

of currently popular sociological theories and research methods, but of

the historical debates and questions that led to their development. For the

purposes of this chapter, it is helpful to think of professional sociology as

composed of the theoretical frameworks, methodological approaches, and

historical perspectives that dominate American sociology.

“Professional sociologist” is, for most academic sociologists, our “master

identity.” Importantly, as Burawoy (2005:10) correctly points out, “there

can be neither policy nor public sociology without a professional sociology.”

It is the seed from which the other three types grow. Obviously, then, if

sociologists hope to develop a more public—or, for that matter, critical or

policy—brand of sociology in high school courses, it is necessary, first, for

professional sociology to have a strong presence.

Unfortunately, the little existing research indicates that professional

sociology—that is, academic sociology: formal theory, research methods,

and a history of the discipline’s development—has been a relative rarity

in high school sociology courses over the past 95 years.

Marlene Weber

(1978) carried out a survey of high school sociology courses and teachers

in Wisconsin. She found that more than half (57.2 percent) of the courses

focused solely on social problems or on a combination of social problems

Presenting Sociology’s Four “Faces” 191

and sociology. Very little academic sociology—in other words, professional

sociology—was being taught at the time. In a follow-up to Weber’s (1978)

research, Kraft (1981) again surveyed Wisconsin high school sociology

teachers. He found that only about one-fourth (27 percent) of the courses

stressed “sociology as [a] scientific discipline”; the other 73 percent em-

phasized social problems, practical interpersonal relationships, or some

other approach (p. 67). Like Weber (1978), Kraft (1981:71) was forced to

the conclusion that, at least in Wisconsin’s high schools, there was a “lack

of emphasis on the scientific nature of sociology” in favor of a superficial

focus on current social problems.

Though it would be nearly two decades before the publication of the next

study of the content of high school sociology courses, it was apparent that

nothing had changed. Dennick-Brecht (2000), Lashbrook (2001), and De

Cesare (2007) found that a large majority of high school sociology teachers

in Pennsylvania (88.9 percent), New York (72.5 percent), and Connecticut

(91.1 percent), respectively, used a standard introductory textbook—the

overwhelming majority of which were college-level texts. Though a large

percentage of teachers in each state ostensibly relied on a textbook as their

primary teaching tool, at least some in Connecticut used it “as a reference

more than a bible,” as one teacher told me during an interview. In other

words, some teachers use texts solely to introduce students to the terminol-

ogy and definitions that supposedly characterize sociology.

To provide the “meat” of the course, teachers utilized readings other

than a textbook. Lashbrook (2001) and DeCesare (2007) both reported

that an overwhelming percentage of the teachers in their respective samples

(94.4 percent in New York and 82.1 percent in Connecticut) incorporated

national and local newspaper as well as newsmagazine articles (e.g., New

York Times, Hartford Courant, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report). These,

of course, focus almost exclusively on current events, and are notoriously

deficient in the extent of the sociological analyses they offer.

There is more. Research methods, which is generally considered one of

the two pillars of professional sociology, was included in fewer than three-

fourths (72 percent) of the courses I studied in Connecticut; the second pil-

lar of professional sociology, theoretical perspectives, was offered in fewer

than half (45 percent) of the courses (DeCesare 2007). These topics were

included in 82.4 percent and 43.7 percent of New York high school sociol-

ogy courses, respectively (Lashbrook 2001). The most recent results clearly

indicate that professional sociology is being deemphasized in favor of top-

ics that teachers perceive to be more interesting and relevant to students:

culture, race, gender, deviance, and the like.

One final point has to do with teachers’ conceptions of sociology as a

field of study. In short, they do not take it all that seriously. When pressed

during interviews, teachers are typically much more concrete and articulate